Tag Archives: Chatroulette

Working in his bedroom in Moscow, Andrey Ternovskiy created a controversial site which accumulated tens of millions of users in just three months. Chatroulette was geared to allow random video chats with strangers – an idea which is quite unusual to hear from a teenaged video game aficionado.

As Chatroulette became infamous, the seventeen-year-old founder was hunted down by investors and media who all wanted a piece of his success. Ternovskiy suddenly had a situation at hand. How will he explain that Chatroulette was not a company, but just a boy in Russia? He was sure that meeting with professional businessmen would mean the end for him. He will probably be offered a substantial amount, but his involvement in his project would be terminated.

Ternovskiy did not want that. He compared Chatroulette to a book and him an author. No other author can finish what you have started writing.

He ignored the calls and e-mails at first, but finally summed up the courage to talk to them. He initially accepted invites for interviews and later flew to America to meet potential investors. With the same tenacity, he decided to keep his company and move permanently to Palo Alto, California. To this day, the only money Ternovskiy received from others is from his father, who paid for his initial servers.

The company got very hot, very briefly because it gave users more freedom to communicate through the internet – even with people they don’t know. Others may have thought of a no-rules video chat site before, but Ternovskiy was the only one who was brave – or foolishly young – enough to pursue the idea. Although he has met criticism because of the risks that come along with Chatroulette, he still has full faith in what he’s doing.

The young tech entrepreneur wants to keep on working on Chatroulette for the next five years, but wishes to pursue other ventures in the long run.